Nygard Talks Trekkies

Making a documentary on Star Trek fans was such a good idea to Roger Nygard, that he did two different ones and he doesn’t rule out a third movie.

As reported by Den of Geek, the idea for Trekkies came from Denise Crosby (Tasha Yar.) “Denise had co-starred in my first film, High Strung, and a couple of years later she suggested the idea to me,” said Nygard. “I couldn’t believe nobody had done it yet, it seemed so obvious.” Nygard and Crosby got funding for their first shoot, which took place at a convention at the LAX Hilton. “[Fantasticon] was organized and hosted by William Campbell, known for the character Trelane in the TOS episode called The Squire Of Gothos,” explained Nygard. “We ended up interviewing six of the nine TOS actors, and the footage from that first weekend was so colorful and amazing that we kept shooting until we had a movie.”

Trekkies was not meant to ridicule Star Trek fans, even though some fans were more fanatic than fan. “We wanted Trek fans as well as non-fans to be able to enjoy the film,” said Nygard. “But maybe one reason our film seems affectionate is because we liked the people we met. When we laughed, we wanted to be laughing with the people on camera, not at them.”

Fan response was generally positive, although there were fan concerns regarding the first Trekkies. “We screened a rough cut for a group of non-Trek-fans and there were a lot of laughs,” said Nygard. “And what was surprising to us, was that when we next tested the film for a group of hard-core Trekkies, they laughed even harder than the civilians. They recognized a lot of people in the film, or knew people just like them, and got all the references.”

But “Not everybody was happy with the first Trekkies,” admitted Nygard. “Some of the fans…[said] ‘You should have shown more normal fans.’ But if you make a film about the average folks, who would want to see a movie about them? It’s the exceptional people that make for interesting profiles. Plus, I have no idea what the definition of normal is. So when we decided to make Trekkies 2, that’s one of the questions we asked people, to define what is and is not normal fan behavior.”

Will there be a Trekkies 3? “We received a lot of suggestions from fans for the Trekkies 2, and we tracked many of them down,” said Nygard. “The suggestions are still coming in for Trekkies 3. Keep ’em coming. We may come and find you…”